


Headshots

by punahukka



Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Psychological Trauma, Teamwork, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:38:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punahukka/pseuds/punahukka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Steve, you’ve seen these before?”<br/>“Yeah. A Hydra experiment to reuse dead troops. Tested it on civilians as well.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headshots

**Author's Note:**

> For zombi-fic-ation prompt: "Back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways to kill zombies, and it was in a blizzard."

 

(Bucky grips his hand hard enough to hurt, and the feverish desperation in his eyes drills the message into Steve’s head straight through his frontal lobe. “Don’t let me become one.”)  
  
 _”Hey, how many Avengers does it take to change a light bulb in a hospital swarming with fucking zombies?”_  
 _“Clint, shut up.”_  
 _“Bruce? Talk to me, baby, you getting anything?”_  
 _“You got visual on this?”_  
 _“JARVIS is hacking into here, there and everywhere as we speak.”_  
 _“The X-Files?”_  
 _“There’s blood on the door frame, they’ve probably taken the second floor too.”_  
 _“Cap?”_  
  
Steve crouches to take cover behind an abandoned reception counter and bangs the back of his head to it, once, just to make sure. “Bruce, get to business with Pepper and make sure all the other hospitals in the area - hell, in Manhattan - are aware of the situation and locking down everyone suspected to be infected.” A cold sweat has broken on his forehead and he swipes it away, breathing, concentrating, kicking himself to stay in the 21st century. “Don’t let them bite or scratch you. Better if you don’t let them touch you at all.”  
 _“So we’ve established that these are fucking zombies?”_ Clint asks over the comm, and a second later there’s a sound of a faint explosion. _“Jesus fuck these guys are ugly!”_  
  
(They’ve all seen dead people by now; none of them has prepared for dead people walking on their rotting feet and trying to take a bite of living flesh wherever they can get one, and here, somewhere in southern Nazi-occupied Norway they’re watching a whole village of dead people limping around, growling.)   
  
_“Steve, you’ve seen these before?”_  
“Yeah. A Hydra experiment to reuse dead troops. Tested it on civilians as well.”  
 _“So technically they’re civilians?”_  
 _“Technically that one just tried to gnaw at my leg.”_  
 _“Like hell they’re civilians, or even people, look at their eyes!”_  
 _“If we start discussing dead peoples’ rights right now the whole fucking New York will be gnawing at each other’s legs in a few hours.”_  
 _“Shouldn’t we try to round ‘em up until we figure out a cure?”_  
“There’s no cure.”  
  
For a moment there’s an absolute silence on the line.   
  
“So, listen up, take headshots or take no shots at all. Thor, I’m in the reception lounge, take a left from where you’re standing and follow the green line, you come with me. Clint, Natasha, secure the rest of the eastern wing and meet us downstairs, we need to get to the morgue. Don’t use elevators. Tony, check the second floor.”  
 _“I’m on it.”_  
  
(The Commandos are a special force of soldiers and they do what they have to. They set the infected village on fire but partly decomposed human bodies don’t burn that well, and these ones don’t care about losing their skin or their sight. They are easier to shoot against the background of flames, though.)  
  
In a few deep breaths to keep him from throwing up Steve’s accompanied by Thor’s reassuringly stern presence and they make their way to nearest stairs leading down.   
“You don’t seem too surprised by this?” Steve mutters as they start their careful descending, and for once he’s glad he’s holding a gun, borrowed from one of the police officers blocking the main entrances of the hospital - Steve didn’t have to negotiate about the weapon for long, breaking the rules or not the officer seemed more than glad to let Captain America disarm him and take over the situation.  
  
“I have encountered corpses brought back to life before,” Thor says grimly. “I find it even more degrading when they don’t have souls in them.”   
“Isn’t it better if the souls don’t have to be a part of this?” Steve asks because with an enemy like this there’s no need for silence and he doesn’t want to remember.   
“In my experience souls tend to grow quite attached to the bodies they inhabit,” Thor states and leaves it at that.   
For once Steve thinks the two of them don’t look too out of place: with the hollow echo of their boots and the cold light of the staircase there’s nothing natural about any of this.   
  
(“I fucked this girl back in Oslo,” Bucky says staring down at the body of a blond-haired woman who’s still squirming and snarling despite the grenade having blown off the lower part of her body. Steve takes a look, recognises the resistance movement agent and turns away as Dum Dum draws a pistol and puts a bullet through her head.)  
  
Bruce returns to the line: _“It would be great if you got a blood sample.”_  
 _“Way ahead of you,”_ Tony says. _“Got a brain sample too. Yuck.”_  
“How’s the second floor?”  
 _“Blasted two creepers, haven’t seen others. If Pepper’s not home tonight, then Bruce, I’m sleeping in your bed.”_  
 _“So much of a ‘yuck’, eh?”_  
 _“Get a room, you two.”_  
 _“That’s what we’re working on, Barton. I think it’s somewhat scientifically proven that cuddling prevents nightmares. Tasha, is Clint a cuddler?”_  
 _“Go fuck yourself, Stark.”_  
  
The stairs end into a corridor with bloodstains here and there and a lonely figure of a man crawling towards them, slowly but enthusiastically. It makes small wet groans in the back of its throat as it sees them, and Steve can see the reason for its slowness: it has no toes in its left foot and the right leg is missing from mid-thigh with a couple of inches of bone sticking out. From what’s distinguishable beneath the blood Steve would guess it’s wearing nurse’s scrubs.   
Thor gestures for him to keep going, and Steve passes the creature’s grasp easily, wincing at the sound of Mjölnir bashing its skull into tiny pieces across the floor.   
  
He peeks into rooms they come by, but they’re empty from people and undead alike, and he is already afraid they’re going to find the real party at the morgue.   
  
(Someone has a nervous breakdown. Someone commits suicide. Then someone gets bitten.)  
  
“It’s morbid that people come to places like this to die,” Thor mutters quietly.   
  
They hear two gunshots and hurry their steps to find a group of five zombies crossing their path. Before they have time to do anything two of them are taken down by arrows and the rest by bullets.   
“Clint, Tasha, it’s us!” Steve shouts before stepping to their line of sight from around the corner.  
“Looks like you got the cleaner route,” Clint grumbles and nods to the right from where Steve and Thor have come. “That way seems to be the jackpot.”   
There’s a door open down the corridor and there are voices, but they are by no means what any of them consider human.   
“It’s gonna be ugly,” Steve says, and the rest nod in determined unison. “Let’s be quick.”  
  
(Someone says they cannot kill him. Most of them say they cannot let him live. The bitten soldier shrieks to them to be done with it already, and in the end everyone agrees he has a right to die as a soldier instead of a monster. It doesn’t make pulling the trigger any easier.)  
  
The floor is slippery with entrails and blood. There are twenty or so undead, most of them on their knees ripping open a body that won’t be rising up again.   
With the four of them it doesn’t last long, but Steve finds his hand shaking and fingers resisting when he looks at the last one and realises it can’t be a body more than five years old.   
Natasha shoots before he can pull himself together.   
  
Clint takes a look around the remaining rooms at the end of the corridor and declares them clear.  
“Tony? Bruce? Get someone down here, I think we’re done.”  
  
(Then they hear about the other village.)  
  
They return to the Stark Tower hours later.  
  
Clint throws up into the garbage bin next to the kitchen counter, violently and heartily. Natasha goes into her room and locks the door.   
  
There’s no immediate danger of an outbreak and it is most unlikely that the virus has spread further than the one hospital; how the first body got infected is still under investigation.  
  
While Thor sits on the couch staring into nothingness and Bruce comes to drag somewhat hysterically babbling Tony with him Steve forces his limbs to move. He takes a long hot shower and rubs his skin until he sees the first drops of blood, but it doesn’t take away the cold sickening feeling.  
  
(They’re low on ammo, food and all the other resources, and they have to make the decision of bombing the next village down, whether there are survivors or not, because otherwise they won’t survive either.)  
  
When he finally gets back to the living room Thor is there, but now in his civilian outfit as well. They sit in silence for a long time, neither one of them turning on the television nor reaching for a magazine.  
  
“It should be so easy,” Thor finally says, his voice surprisingly soft, “with all their technology, medicine and weapons.”  
“When I last saw those creatures I wouldn’t have dreamed of something like JARVIS even existing, let alone helping us,” Steve admits. “But maybe it stands for something. It not being easy.”  
Thor smiles at him, but goes serious again: “You are a man of honor, Steve. I would trust you not letting any of us become something like these undead. And it is not easy.”  
Steve smiles back at him.  
  
(He has nightmares of his friends dying, but even worse ones of them coming back.)


End file.
